During frying, particularly deep fat frying in liquid grease such as molten lard or cooking oil, particles of food separate from the food being fried and become suspended in the liquid grease. These particles burn on further frying and, at some point, prevent the further use of the grease. Even if they do not burn, if they are left in the grease and it is stored, they tend to turn the grease rancid and make it unsuitable for further use.
There is no existing kitchen utensil which provides a safe means to filter grease. A wire strainer can be used but this requires the user to pour the hot grease out of the fryer through the strainer and into a container. At the end of this operation, the user must then pour the hot grease back into the fryer if he prefers to store it there.
Several years ago, small sized deep fat fryers were popular because cooking grease is frequently only used once for the reasons mentioned above. These little fryers, however, tend to sit on the shelf unused since they do not address the real problem which would be solved if there was an effective way of filtering the grease.
Devices for filtering food liquids are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 36,530 and 2,432,073. However, none of the devices disclosed in these patents or otherwise in use is particularly adapted to filtering particles of food from liquid grease in a deep fat fryer (herein referred to as "fryer") and returning the filtered grease to the fryer or to another container.